Despite the dramatic rise in immigration in the past 30 years, virtually nothing is known about how well the children of new immigrants adapt to American society. The project described in this proposal is a longitudinal study of the transition to adulthood among adolescence within families from the largest immigrant groups in the United States: Mexican, Central and South Americans, Filipinos, and Chinese. Youths within native-born families from these groups will also participate in the study, as well those from both immigrant and native-born families with European backgrounds. The main goals of the proposed project are threefold: (1) to assess the educational and occupational attainments of these youths as they make the transition from high school to young adulthood; (2) to examine the roles played in these attainments by both prior and current social and cultural factors, particularly: (a) youths; academic achievement in secondary school; (b) the expectations and support of their families and peers; (c) the youths' own attitudes and behaviors; (d) their use of employment networks within their immigrant communities; and (e) their sense of obligation to their families; and (3) to explore the extent to which youth's ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds moderate the influence of the social and cultural factors on their attainments.
